


Damiana Ostinato

by viceindustrious



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Aphrodisiacs, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Desperation, Drug-Induced Sex, Dubious Consent, Humiliation, M/M, Object Insertion, Orgasm Denial, Overstimulation, Unconscious Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:32:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coward wants something to keep his mind off Henry's absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damiana Ostinato

**Author's Note:**

> Evolved out of a prompt for the adventchallenge. Absolutely, unapologetic, irredeemable, porn from start to finish.

Coward thinks he should get something between his teeth before they crack, not his tongue, no, _lord no_ , he'd bite through it. His bottom lip is already bleeding, tacky and bright on his incisors and his fingers are wet and mottled in a lovers' bouquet of reds and pinks and whites. He's been gnawing at them, his thumb especially, bite marks framing that padded oval of flesh like a dress pattern, _cut here_.

The key scratches the lock, his hands are shaking and it keeps slipping. Coward whimpers, pressing his forehead against his bedroom door, knocks his head against it hard but the pain doesn't clear his thoughts and it doesn't stop his hands from trembling. When he finally gets the key inside and the tumblers turn he gives a sob of relief and sinks to the floor.

He swallows the syllables of Henry's name over and over, whispering, pleading. The taste of cinnamon is still clinging to the back of his throat.

But Henry is in the grave and he won't rise again until tomorrow. Oh how could he have been so foolish to ask for this? He thought the absence, the uncertainty would be too great to bear. Watching Henry hang? How could he?

 _I'll have Reordan come up with something to take your mind off it,_ Henry had said and Coward should have known then, from the gentle touch of Henry's hand on his brow, that soft, too-soft look in his eyes, he should have been wary. Henry's tenderness is like the deceptive yielding of quicksand or tar. His love is as all consuming and so rarely without cruelty.

Coward's housekeeper had taken in the parcel that morning. Untying the string and peeling away the layers of coarse paper, he found a bottle. The glass was a pretty purple colour and the stopper had been blown into an ornate, twisted loop. There was a sweetness about that, like the curled wrapper of a valentine chocolate, though he note that came attached had been brief and to the point. _Drink this - H._

As good as an order and Coward was not one to disobey. He thought it might be something like laudanum, but stronger of course, a medicine that would draw a pale, silver veil across his worries. Henry had given him such things before. Things that turned the world into shifting, nonsense colours and billowing, beautiful shapes. Things that made him forget his name, how to speak, made him fall open utterly in Henry's arms, welcome anything that was done to him.

Coward had even sampled the same Shakespearean potion that allowed Henry to fake his death (for the sake of curiosity and to settle his own fears that Henry would wake at all) and when he returned from that great, numbing slumber he had found his body livid with bruises, bites, aching all over. A sting and stickiness between his legs where Henry must have pushed into his cold, unresisting body and taken his pleasure. Though when he mentioned it, Henry merely laughed at the presumption that _he'd_ been the one doing the fucking. It could have been anyone at all, he had pointed out, any _number_ of people.

The liquid in the bottle had been a dark gold, thick as syrup, sweet and fiery. Coward had felt the burn of it all the way down to his stomach. Then, for a little while, nothing at all.

He gasps now as another wave of almost, _almost_ orgasm rolls over him. He knocks his head against the door again, hard enough this time that his vision swims and he lists to one side.

He needs. He needs, he needs, he needs, he needs. _He needs it to stop._

Was the delay in the potion's effect some extra clever torture that Reordan had stirred in at Henry's request? Could Henry have known Coward would leave the house, anxious and disappointed at the bottle's failure? He'd sat for the better part of an hour, staring at the ceiling and trying to believe he could see whorls of pattern shifting there, willing his mind to settle into the pleasant dream-world he'd been expecting before giving it up for a lost cause and stepped out to seek other distractions.

So he was in Hyde Park when it began to take effect. A creeping, tingling sensation; like a graze, like the finest, thinnest part of his skin had been peeled back and now the air, his clothes, were brushing against the very tips of his nerve endings. The edge of his collar was sharp around his neck, an ache in his groin and then, suddenly, a sharp blow of arousal that actually made him stagger.

There was a wire of steel, a rabbit snare, that had wound itself into the thick, coiled ropes of his gut and then pulled short. A blow to the stomach that took out his breath, short with a shock of lust.

In an instant he was hard, his cock standing rigid against his leg and his trousers pressing down unbearably against it. He shuddered, then froze, his mouth hanging open and dry. One step and his eyes rolled back in his head. It was _impossible_. The shift of fabric against the sensitive, engorged flesh of his cock was too much to stand. But he had no choice.

By some miracle, he spotted a newspaper that had been left on one of the park benches and managed to stagger over to it. He meant to pick it up to give him some poor semblance of modesty on the journey home, but just walking had brought him to the brink of release and he couldn't come there, could he? Out there, in the open? He sat down and covered his lap with the paper, waiting for the feeling to pass and taking deep, panicked lungfuls of air, trying to freeze himself from the inside out. The iron of the bench had stored up all of late November's chill and it was freezing cold, but his body paid no heed to the bitter bite of the metal, only felt that it was _hard_ and there was something wonderful about that, something to cleave to, to rut against, to curl his fingers round.

Frostbite would have been a trifle. The muscles in his thighs, in his hips, refused to stay still. Squirming, he bucked against the newspaper, found himself mindlessly folding the thing in half and then pressing it down against his cock, unable to resist the exquisite friction. He was praying desperately that no one found him in this state, at any moment someone could have strolled blithely down the same path that he had chosen and he wasn't sure if he could have made himself sit still for even a moment to let them pass. It felt so good, touching himself, his hips rocking eagerly against the roll of paper held tight between his clenched fists.

Before he was utterly lost, a twig snapped behind him. Only a bird, but the noise was enough to pull him out of that awful cycle of self abuse. He forced himself back onto his feet and made his way out of the park, powerless, to his desperate shame, to keep himself from groaning audibly with every step. He couldn't keep quiet, he _couldn't_. The ratcheting tension in his belly had grown hotter and heavier and all he could think about was touching himself again. It took every ounce of his will to keep his hands at his sides, he could not keep from moaning too.

One hand still covering his lap, he flagged down the first hansom cab he saw. Despite the weather, he knew there was sweat beading on his brow, just as he was sure his smile was strained and tight and his cheeks red. He was bursting at the seams, so full and feverish and the slide of cotton over his cock as he sat down was almost enough to make him come right there.

It was horrifying. Ghastly, the entire journey, utterly awful. He was too exposed, the carriage may have been moving quickly but the streets were roughly paved beneath its thin wheels and bustling with people. The former made it impossible to keep still, the latter, so humiliating he thought at the time he might pass out.

Because no, no he couldn't sit still and the carriage was shuddering, shaking, a vibration that unstitched him with brutal, thorough efficiency. The walls of his control cracked and crumbling and the muscles in his legs cramping as he fought against the desire to sink down low and spread his legs wide. His toes were curled, feet moving restlessly and his slippery palms sliding back and forth against the leather edge of the seat. He dug his heels into the floor of the carriage and gritted his teeth. Between his legs, he could feel himself soaking through his undergarments. It had felt so wet, torid, as if a well sharpened razor had sliced through his femoral artery like a whisper and he was bleeding out unknown. He'd never been so wet without bleeding before. Never felt such a mortifying slickness trickling down his thighs.

If he spread his legs then his trousers would pull against his cock again and he couldn't allow that. He had to keep control. That potion . . . that _poison_ had crept through his blood and there was no way to draw it out, no way to take it back. Coward could feel it, sense it as it seeped through his flesh, saturating each hopelessly twitching muscle, inflaming his skin into a frenzy of flayed nerves. In his mind's eye he saw it happening, his blood scarlet and spiced and dazzling with flecks of shining black. Obsidian pepper, a fine grit that was scrubbing him raw from the inside out.

The leather squealed beneath his grasping hands as he turned his head from one side to the other and then up to stare blindly at the dark canopy of the cab itself. He knew if he allowed his eyes to close it wouldn't just be the street he lost sight of, but the last shreds of his dignity too. The blindfold of his eyelids would be a false comfort. A childish one that tried to tell him, sing song, if he couldn't see them it meant they couldn't see _him_.

His groans had been soft, constant, still he hoped that the driver didn't recognize what was happening to his passenger. His palm hovering fitfully above his lap, his fist clenched in the air, his hips jerking up, violently, frantic for just one touch. He'd been caught in the torture of this cycle, bringing his fist down onto the seat, slapping the leather over and over, barely hanging on to his will.

It had been worse in the cab than it had been in the park. It was worse again now. He'd been shuffling then, back and forth in his seat, just little movements to try and unwind the tension that was gathering in the tops of his legs and the small of his back, his body shivering. So very, very empty.

That was the word that undid him. As soon as it flashed across his mind, his eyes had flown wide open and he had to bite down on his knuckles to stifle his moan. Empty, empty, his body screamed antonyms at him, oh yes, you're so empty. And wouldn't it be nice to be full, don't you need something inside you, yes, yes, _yes_ something heavy, something solid, something thick, wide, stretching, filling, please, please, please.

He was helpless to stop the spread of his legs, his hips lifting right up, slumping down so that his shoulders were lying flat against the seat. His toes spread wide too, straining, the arch of his foot starting to cramp. Stomach clenching, his body stuttering and jerking in the air. So, so empty.

The wind licked across his neck, the world faded foggy out of focus, slipping away, his eyelids falling shut as he lay there, suspended. Release, he could taste it like rain in the air, what a relief it would be.

At the last moment he was able to scramble back from the edge.

He knows he must have babbled something to the driver about not feeling well, but his mind had been flickering like a candle set in a draught. The weight of his humiliation and the weight of his lust were almost perfectly balanced, teetering back and forth. Something was going to buckle soon. There was no way to hide his state from the other man, he could only stand there shuddering and fiercely ignore the looks he was getting as he searched for money to pay the fare.

Now he's inside, safe from prying eyes, but he could not call it _better_. Not this fever that had him shamelessly rooting around in the kitchen for . . . oh he knows what for, he knows so he doesn't have to think it even to himself.

It's so uncouth, so crass. His stomach lurches and tries to pull itself into abashed knots, but there's too much desire coiled there already. Coward sits on the floor, perfectly torn between his arousal and his self reproach. He's panting even though he isn't out of breath, in love with the sensuality of the air filling his lungs, the sweet torment of his shirt moving against his chest. His nipples are hard, aching at their centre.

He swallows and stares at the carrot he brought up from the kitchen. Just the sight of it makes him shudder, perhaps because it _is_ undignified, it's desperate and obscene and he is that desperate, he is that vulgar, that low. Thinking the words he rolls onto his stomach and thrusts against the carpet. What has Henry done to him?

His face pressed into the floor, Coward closes his eyes. He can't stop, god, his whole body is singing at the touch, it's like a caress, a thousand brushes stroking him at once, his mind, his mind is filled with the pain of desire, with the pounding, terrible need for a release. He's wound past the point where he should have broken, he's sure, but the strings just pull tighter and tighter, a tone that keeps rising and never reaches an apex. He should undress, he wants to touch himself, but he can't stop rocking his hips against the floor.

In his hand, the carrot is rough and heavy. Chantenay carrots, gorgeously thick. Three inches round, he thinks. He wishes it were larger. He wishes Henry had made good on his promise to buy him something to pleasure himself with, as much as he'd blushed at the mention of it back then. He has no thought of shame now. The carrot is cool in his hand, blunt, he grips it tight and whimpers at the unyielding girth. It _must_ be inside him.

Is this how it feels to be an animal? No thoughts, nothing rational, just pure hunger and howling instinct? To be fucked. To be fucked, to be taken, to have yourself stuffed full of cock – that's all that matters.

It's impossible for there to be anything else. He'll go mad if he continues with the empty, aching space inside him, begging to be filled. He has to, he has to to fill that hole, he needs to come. Relief. There has to be an end to this ascension before he can't get his breath at all.

He wriggles out of his clothes, still keeping flat across the floor, scraping the skin off his heels as he pushes his shoes off. He sobs as he shuffles his trousers down his legs. Too much, far too much. It's an agonizing overload of sensation. It's as though someone is polishing his nerves with sandpaper, mercilessly buffing him to hypersensitivity. Abrasive, each and every fibre that drags across his skin.

Coward screws his eyes shut, takes a deep breath and rolls over onto his back. A warning sign flares up in the back of his mind, glaring and yellow for danger. The tingling of his skin seems to have settled deeper into his flesh and grown barbed roots, there is a flash of brilliant pain when his back meets the carpet. It fades just as fast, but his skin feels tight and stretched, like the beginning of a sunburn, as though he has already been burnt deep down and now that slow, searing glow is charring a path to the surface.

Glancing down at the flushed, bright colour of his cock, Coward swallows again. Cinnamon, how sinister it feels on his tongue now. All spice, no sweetness. His cock is too swollen, tight with blood, he's afraid to touch himself. His body knows what it needs though and his legs have drawn up and apart on instinct.

There's nothing to ease the way. The state he's in, any journey, no matter how small to fetch oil would be an insurmountable trek. His mouth is like a desert, no spit to slick the carrot's skin.

It doesn't matter. The pain does nothing to stop him from pushing his hips up as he presses the carrot inside himself. He's grinding forward against the vegetable in his hand and it pulls, tugs at his dry skin and that burns but, oh, only a few inches in and he can't help clenching compulsively around it, over and over. The feel of that stretch is divine, even the dry friction is scratching some terrible, unbearable itch. He twists as he pushes, and the pain, the pain is gorgeous. He thinks he must be making noise, crying out but that doesn't matter either. Further, further he pushes and yet he can't reach it, he's not even brushing whatever part of him is so desperate to be touched.

Coward snarls and tosses his head back and forth, but the frustration remains. The carrot scrapes, coarse and ridged, against the small spot of pleasure inside him, but it's not enough. There's something deeper. That emptiness has to be filled. Can't and won't meet need and want and he whimpers. No, no, he _must_ fuck himself deeper, he has to rub away that incessant itch.

Henry can't have thought he would leave the house, he must have misjudged the effects of the potion. Surely, surely. If Coward had not been home he would have been on his knees, begging to be fucked, begging anyone, the middle of Piccadilly Circus, it wouldn't matter. He'd been on all fours, he'd pay for it. He'd do anything right now if only there was a way to reach that spot.

He pulls the carrot out and then pushes it in again, in and out, thrusting back on it. Tries again, fucking it into himself as deep as it will go, the widest part making him groan as it passes his entrance. He might be tearing himself apart, he doesn't care. A little more, just a little more, it's so good, so nearly there. His muscles clamp down, it rubs inside him. He needs it deeper. The carrot slides further, further still and then he clenches around it again and it's slipped entirely out of his hand, swallowed right up by his greedy body. Only the bushy green leaves remaining.

Coward stills, shocked. He touches the stems tentatively, tugs a little, but his muscles are clamped down tight. If he tries to pull it out now then the leaves may just break off in his hand and then . . . what would he do then? He's stuck, his insides fluttering around the thick, solid mass of the carrot. The weight and stretch of it laying still within him, teasing, still not full enough and now he cannot fuck himself, can not press into the needy little gland that gives him so much pleasure. It's enough to brush it, to torment it, but he needs more than that, he needs firm, insistent pressure.

His fingers, he should have used his fingers to press into himself, to coax relief from his throbbing, tender body. Now he's denied himself of even that. Overfull, his heart overflowing with beats, hammering dread-lust-dread through his veins, he doesn't feel empty any longer. Everything but the hummingbird pace of his heart freezes in place, his eyes snapped open wide and horrified and fixed on the ceiling. 

If he pulls them down to look between his legs he knows what he will see. He's made himself a tail, how comic. His fingertips press into his temples, he wants to dig the thought out of his head. Could he burrow in with his nails, scrape past bone, scratch the image away, scratch this _itch_  away, this need. 

It's still there. It's worse. The thing - the carrot, lodged deep, has made him sharply, intensely aware of the twinging heat inside him. So hot. So taut. His skin is tingling, flushed and tight like he's roasting on a spit. The air is cool against the sopping mess on his stomach, the wet, heavy length of his cock. His back prickles with sweat and chafes against the carpet at the slightest movement. 

A carrot. A  _carrot_ , for pity's sake, what sort of creature is he? How could he- but oh, it's nice. Disgusting, mortifying lack of self control, awful, awful how it seems so much bigger now its inside him, fatter. He clenches reflexively around it, muscles clamping down hard and then slowly relaxing, clamping down again, caught in a loop of sustained pleasure. The carrot moves as he squeezes, rubbing against the delicate soft tissue inside him, which feels swollen and inflamed, as over sensitive as his cock. 

Henry teases him sometimes (teases while he's teasing) fingering him slowly, says that he's made to be fucked, that he's almost like a woman between his legs. There's something unpleasant lurking in those words, an undercurrent of accusation but Coward has never felt more like they were true than he does now. It's involuntary and insistent, this pulsing rhythm, squeeze and release and breathe and arch and for a moment he sinks under it completely. There's no thought in his head, only the tight, stretched fullness inside him. 

It shifts as he spasms around it, again and again. It's a loop, a round rail he's being dragged around. Round like the crescent of his hand circling his cock. He wants to stroke. He wants to pull his hand away. He's afraid. He slides his hand up himself and the burst of pleasure is studded through with pain, a flush of stinging heat that makes him jerk his hand away at once. It fades quickly but the warmth that's prickling through his entire body is only getting worse. As if there are little flames lapping under his skin, needles piercing him just barely, all over. Narrow everything down to one of those sharp white points and that's where he's suspended, precarious. His hand hovers above his cock, the need to touch himself is massive despite what he knows will happen if he does. Chewing his lip, he brushes his fingers along the shaft, delicately, feather soft. He can feel the pain simmering gently beneath the rasp of his fingertips, ready to leap up at any more pressure than that. 

It would be better to stop touching. He  _can't_  stop touching. Coward stares down the landscape of his body then up at the ceiling in despair. His hand moves slowly. The small of his back is starting to ache from the constant flex of his hips but the worst of it is how the carpet feels like it's peeling away his skin when he moves even a little. 

Something must crest, surely. If he can just control himself it will have to stop and recede. If he could bring himself to completion it would stop then, but his own soft touch isn't enough for that. He can only hope the pain will fade. He tries to focus on his breath, but as his chest expands his skin pulls tight across his ribcage, his nipples are aching too, hot and sore and it's impossible to stop himself from twitching around the carrot. The air is still, but it feels like a caress on the hard points of his nipples, like a cool touch against the swollen, wet head of his cock. 

Henry's name is stuck on his tongue. The word bleeds from Henry to help to a dizzy panting  _he_ -, hyperventilating, his throat parched. It's not stopping, whatever is in his blood now, it feel stronger than ever. His fingers squirm against his palm, clammy and soft and damp, his knuckles click against one another, his nails bite into his flesh. He takes three deep breaths and then screws his eyes up. Push past the pain, he thinks, it's what he must do. If he can push past that pain and come,  _yes_. 

He braces himself and rolls over onto his stomach. 

The room dims. A nauseous shiver rocks through him, a staggered, ear popping rush of blackness. He feels nothing for one stretched second and then his nerves all scream at him at once, roaring pain, like he's been scoured all down his front. The carpet snags under his nails as he claws at it, rutting against the floor. It hurts so badly but he can't stop. Flashes of agony, pleasure, the carrot that's plugging him up, the throb in his nipples, the sweet sting of friction against his cock as his hips thrust against the carpet – the winding, winding pressure of this loop that's drawing tighter, flaying him with the friction of his own trapped pleasure, his body packed too full, near overflow. There's his climax though, thundering toward him. He can feel it in that coiling pressure and in his heart beat, in the way his muscle tremble and threaten to clamp, cock stripped and slick against the carpet. His peak is right-

Coward's whole body tenses. Rippling from his centre, one huge contraction. He's lost, drooling on the floor, the open o of his mouth in anticipation of a great, final moan. Right as his mind sways at the very edge of release, the pleasure suddenly recoils and reverses, swings back from the brink and down through the other side, like an awful pendulum, into pain, pain, pain. 

He's stuck, not on the edge, but in free fall. His body twitches, caught in the beginning of an orgasm that can not be fulfilled. He gasps, helpless and tries to stop his inner muscle's frustrated, violent spasming around the carrot. Every time he clenches there's a heavy, dull agony that blooms like a percussive beat, dark red and purple stars exploding behind his eyes, throbbing agony in his balls, his body demanding release.

But he hasn't come. He's still falling, muscles contracting, jerking against the floor, struggling to breathe. The pain slams down as his orgasm fails to arrive, overwhelming over stimulation without relief. Pitiful and inescapable, his body floods with blocked up pleasure that demands release yet can find none. His mind is empty, filled with the bright, scattered sparking of metal grinding against metal, the gears of his body's orgasm response struggling to unlock. Hot. Full. Desperate. Nothing. 

It goes on and and on, a stabbing glut of frustration and his body will not learn that clenching is useless, that his hips juddering against floor will bring nothing but agony to his throbbing cock. The pleasure is too much, would be excruciating even without the tide of pain thundering back and forth over him. 

Eventually, even the awful pleasure of this suspended completion dissolves into a deep, glowing ache. Thoughtless, eyes glassy, saliva dampening the carpet beneath his open mouth, his shivers grow smaller, less frequent and finally cease. He lies still for a long while, skin burning, arse full, cock hard, battered by a steady beat of arousal.

He can't move and he doesn't think his hunger will allow him the escape of sleep just yet. Staring at the dust in the air, the slow, sullen afternoon sunlight that's condemning him with its proof of hours and hours and hours until nightfall and even then he'll be just as trapped, adrift and yearning in the dark, waiting for dawn, waiting for Henry. 

-

Coward drifts in and out of consciousness, patches of poor rest that come and go and are filled with feverish, wanting dreams. He's sore from the spasms that are racking his body, it feels as though he's been beaten and though he hasn't eaten since breakfast his stomach is clenched so tight the thought of food is repulsive. Everything hurts. Waking to another shudder, another futile stretch toward orgasm. Sometime in the afternoon he dragged himself, trembling, toward the foot of his bed. Now his arms are wrapped around one of those posts and the wood is littered with teeth marks. 

It's the potion, of course it is, damming his orgasm away from him. Keeping him hard and hypersensitive, as though he's already come and something is still strumming mercilessly against his nerves. 

-

"Oh, Nicholas." 

All night long Coward has been plunged from hot to cold, dreaming, waking, whittling down the thin skin between the two. In the dark his thoughts fell to crypts, stone slabs, how sweet it would feel to have something dead and cold brushing his hair back from his brow. The voice cracks his brittle shell of sleep and he's almost shocked when he opens his eyes to see how neat Henry looks, no cemetery dirt trailing behind him. 

Henry looks human until he smiles. 

For a moment he finds his fingers pushing into the carpet, trying to dig a hole, a small, safe place to flee to. There's Henry, fresh from the grave, his gaze bright and hungry. Its light is magnified by the frustrated shimmer in Coward's eyes, kindling a tiny flame of self preservation in his mind that's born and snuffed out in almost the same instant by the sucking greed of the greater bonfire in his soul that burns just for Henry. 

"Please," Coward says, but the first half of the word gets stuck on his dry lips and the rest just a desperate hiss. He swallows and tries to sit up but the movement causes the carrot to shift inside him and he cries out in surprise, gasps, tries to pull his control back but it's too late and his body is set off into another round of spasms. His head hits the ground, his hips jerk up. 

"What  _have_  you done?" Henry asks.

His eyebrow is raised, there's a rolling note of laughter in the question, indulgent, aroused amusement. Coward can hear him savouring it, in the way his voice drops that little bit lower, the way he's slow moving over his words. Slow, slow, that's what Coward hears most of all and it makes him keen in despair. He wants this to be over. 

"Stop. Stop. Stop," he pants, only able to manage the words in bite size. "Make. It. Stop." 

"But look what you've done," Henry says. 

Coward doesn't understand, but then Henry kneels down beside him and tugs at the sprig of green between his legs. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, shakes his head at Coward. 

"I wanted to fuck you like this," he says. 

"Please, please, I can't-" 

"When they were putting the noose around my neck," Henry murmurs, touching Coward's jaw. 

Coward breathes deep and holds the air in his lungs, eyes wide. Something sharper than desire piercing him, terrible fear followed by overwhelming relief, one following on the heels of the another. He grabs hold of Henry's wrist. 

"I was thinking of you." 

" _Henry_." 

Henry leans down and kisses him. Coward feels his body tighten on the verge of orgasm once more, wind up as Henry's tongue delves into his mouth – a fresh sweat breaks over him and he's left squirming on the edge again. His heart feels like it's going to burst as Henry keeps kissing, deeper, aggressive. Henry pulls the moans from his throat, the secret, breaking noises that shred him from belly to tongue as their jagged edges are tugged free. 

He's begging, please, again before Henry even draws away, mumbling against his lips and then gasping in the open air. 

"Please, I need, I need-"

Henry slides his fingers up the stalk of the carrot and touches the twitching clench of his hole. His knuckles are brushing against Coward's balls and just that slight touch is agony. Coward shakes his head back and forth, makes a terrified, undignified squeal. 

"I know," Henry says. He kisses Coward again and cups his balls in the palm of his hand. Coward tries to wrench his head away from the kiss, the tendons in his neck taut and quivering, but Blackwood bites down on his lip and growls a warning. His hand tightens, crushing the tender, overfull weight of Coward's balls and Coward's stomach flips. He thinks he might throw up, can't breathe past the sudden flare of pain. When Henry lets go, he bursts into tears. 

He's suffocating. He's  _drowning_  and he can't hold onto Henry, only fall into him, only keep falling, waiting on Henry's pleasure – suspended like his climax. 

Henry reaches into his jacket pocket and holds up a vial between his forefinger and thumb. 

"Let us hope Reordan made no mistake with his antidote, he's past the point of correcting it now."

He closes the vial in his palm, makes it disappear with a little sleight of hand and presses a kiss to the vein throbbing on Coward's temple. 

"Perhaps it's poison," Henry says. 

Coward's cock twitches, his lips part, the tip of his tongue peeking out like he's begging for a communion wafer. He'd take poison from Henry's hand. Henry touches his fingers to his lips and Coward licks at them, tasting salt. Is it Henry's skin or his own sweat he's tasting? A thought begins to form out of the fragmented appetite that's swirling like smog in his head; Henry is poison anyway, Henry is-

Speaking softly at his ear. 

"Perhaps it's sugar water," Henry whispers. 

Coward whimpers. 

"I  _told_  you," Henry says. 

Coward shakes his head, he doesn't know what Henry means. 

Henry pushes his legs apart and slicks his fingers with the pool of liquid on Coward's stomach. There's so much of it, the curls around the base of his cock, the hairs on his stomach, they're glistening wet. 

Coward holds his breath, clutching vainly at the idea that he might hold back the sensation along with it. If he could only expand himself, make his body hollow and light and still and escape the over packed, seething heat that's making him squirm. Henry pushes a finger into him and then another and forces the carrot deeper. Coward doesn't know if there's another finger, doesn't know when Henry's thumb joins the others inside him until the stretch is suddenly multiplied and he's being pried open. 

The heel of Henry's thumb is resting just inside him, his knuckles pressing against his rim, opening him monstrously wide. Henry has gotten hold of the end of the carrot, his fingers adding to the girth already filling him. It hurts to clench around the hard bones of Henry's hand but his body is squeezing down tight against his will, trying frantically to close. Coward bites down on the fingers still in his mouth but Henry just snorts and draws them back. He places his palm over Coward's mouth and presses down hard until his lips feel like they're bruising against his teeth. 

"Compose yourself," Henry says, sneering. 

His voice is rough, victorious. He twists the carrot further, twists so his entire hand is inside Coward's body and Coward's eyes roll back in his head. He struggles to breathe just through his nose, huffing noisily, bereft of any rhythm. His head is pounding, starved of oxygen and overheating. Even his tears feel warm. The room seems deafeningly loud with the rush of blood through his ears, Henry's gloating snarl, so contemptuous of composure. Teeth in those words and teeth at his throat as Henry bites his neck as though he wants to strip him to nothing, but he's  _already_  stripped. Maybe Henry can't see, maybe Henry only wants to gnaw on his bones. His hand pushes deeper inside Coward, stretching raw nerves, tissue that's been overfilled with blood for so long now, too sensitive to be touched, it's unbearable to be touched like this. 

Coward paints the words stop and please on the back of his teeth. He cant open his mouth since Henry's hand is still pressed against his lips, hot and damp. 

"Compose yourself, Coward."

There's no composure in Henry's voice as he pushes deeper still and suddenly his wrist is . . . Coward groans behind Henry's palm, he can't let that thought arrange itself into sense. Having those words printed in his mind would be too much, picturing it would be too much, the feeling itself is unendurable except that he has no choice but to endure it. 

He tries to pull Henry's hand away from his mouth but as soon as he touches its, Henry takes it away. Coward manages to gulp down one panicked lungful of air before Henry pushes down on his throat with the strong, flat edge of his hand. Coward chokes, writhing, impaling himself further on Henry's wrist. One hand flexing inside him, the other moving to his nipple and pinching the inflamed little bud of nerves cruelly. 

Each touch layers upon the last. It feels like Henry is still pushing his hand further and further inside him, wants to fill him up until he's irreparably broken, used up and worn out. The pleasure is swollen out of all recognition, fermented and blown up, a bruised, festering thing. When it's lanced, he doesn't think there'll be anything of him left, he'll barely be carnate. 

Henry slowly pulls his hand out, bringing the carrot with him. The sudden loss is shocking. A moment of blankness and then the need roars back, worse than ever. Henry slides a hand up Coward's cock and across his stomach, smearing the wetness down between his thighs and over his stretched hole. He's soaking with precome and sweat and so open that he can feel the air brushing inside him, catching on the sticky mess between his legs. 

The vial reappears in Henry's hand and he uncorks it, pouring the thick liquid over his fingers and then smearing it inside Coward. 

Nothing happens and Coward's toes curl as he realizes the antidote will probably need just as much time to take effect as the evil concoction he took in the first place. Henry begins to unfasten his trousers and he almost bites through his tongue. He's going to be fucked like this, with the potion's invisible cord still bound tightly around his cock. He puts both hands on Henry's shoulders and tries to push him away, but he's far too weak, exhausted and shivery with arousal and Henry's cock enters him with frightening ease. 

There's a rough tug of static between his skin and the hair on Henry's thighs as Henry seats himself deep within him, their bodies slotted tight together. He scrabbles at Henry hopelessly until Henry pins his wrists to the floor and lowers his weight down onto him. Henry waits until he's stopped struggling to release his wrists but he doesn't wait to see if Coward is going to be good before he slaps him, pre emptively, dismissively, the back of his hand against Coward's flushed cheek. Two fingers tap the mark he leaves behind, cautioning, and then he takes hold of Coward's cock. 

Coward thrashes back and forth on the floor and Henry groans, tightens his grip and fucks into his convulsing body. Coward's tongue strains in his mouth, trying to make the right shapes to voice the pain, this razor wire of denial, looping again, curling and pulling to a cutting edge. The torture is recursive, expanding in the straining curve of his body as he tries to throw Henry off and only batters himself against more sensation, the tug of Henry's hand and the thrust of Henry's cock. 

And his cock. Oh. He'd tried to set it apart, ignore that maddening, throbbing insistence but now Henry's hand was there and obliterating every other pain, every other pleasure in his body. The ache is sunk so deep, the nerves laced up taut and twitching. Hard and slick and that slickness is worse than friction, Henry's hand glides up and down, quick and slippery and still so tight. Henry's thumb is a blur moving back and forth over his corona and Coward wails. 

He wants to shrink away, he wants escape but his body thrusts back against Henry as he's fucked, his body starts quivering in anticipation of orgasm while his mind screams no. Henry's still dressed from the waist up, his shirt dragging against Coward's skin. It feels like sandpaper as his nerves strain to find the touch that will finally allow him release. It might be hours yet before the antidote begins to work.

Hours of this. Coward grabs the bedpost so he doesn't start gouging out his own flesh. Henry thrusts hard inside him and now, oh, oh, angled perfectly to hit that spot, full, throbbing, unrelieved. His legs wrap around Henry's back in reflex, desperate to keep him there, pushing against it, so certain that just one more touch will be enough. But it's not. He clenches hard around Henry's cock. There's no mercy, just need, endless and densely aching. Henry's palm polishes the head of his cock as it spills out more clear fluid and he cries out, clenching again, which makes Henry fuck him harder, faster. Fucked deeper, clenching tighter, round and round, reaching, reaching. 

Coward sobs in frustration as Henry shudders and comes inside him. He's still panting, writhing against Henry's softening cock as Henry closes his eyes and catches his breath, slumping on top of him, sated. 

When he pulls out, Coward makes a breathy, lost noise of protest. He squirms, pushing his hips up, opening his legs, begging with his body. He twists Henry's shirt in his hands and whimpers when Henry places a delicate kiss to his throat. 

"I can hardly wait," Henry says. He raises his head and Coward stares up at him beseechingly. Henry's eyes are half closed and lazy with satisfaction. "When this business is over, I can keep you like this for days and days."

Coward closes his eyes. It's too hot, too slick and thick and  _hot_ between them, but Coward slides his fingers into the damp strands of Henry's hair, pulls him closer still and arches up into the torment of his embrace.


End file.
